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Gardeners and their Gardens

To bring both vitality and tranquility to a garden, motion has to be an intentional element of the design.

If you stop and think about it, movement is inherent in nature. Every motion, no matter how big or how small, adds its thread to the tapestry that is our environment. 

Early spring is a great time to turn a hum-drum landscape into the masterpiece of your dreams. Often, adding a few well-chosen and well-placed shrubs to the existing plant palette can make all the difference in the world. 

Typically,  the  first considerations for adding plants to the landscape are whether their peak season characteristics will mesh well with the rest of the existing design. There is however, another question  to ask before choosing new additions : What do they offer for winter?  

One of the aspects of the season that I have especially come to love is winter’s light and shadow. The quality of light is different in the winter. It’s less intense, softer and more diffused. 

What started as a mild season, almost a non-winter winter, has turned into a “Snow-mageddon” here. It’s been snowstorm after snowstorm, temperatures so frigid that it’s dangerous to go outside and depressingly grey skies. Even winter-lovers were having a hard time defending this weather. I must admit that the slight enthusiasm I had mustered for the season was rapidly disappearing.

And then I got an unexpected gift -- a collection of emailed pictures from a friend’s treks in the woods. (Followers of this blog will probably guess that it was Sandy Defoe who sent the pictures; unlike so many of us, she lives for the winter months.) She had stumbled upon a field of hoar frost and she was euphoric over her rare find. 

Welcome back to our virtual tour of some of the world’s outstanding --  and unusual  --  botanical gardens. For this trip, I thought we would start right here in the United States with a visit to a garden that is one of my personal favorites, the Desert Botanical Garden in  Phoenix, Arizona.

Just when quarantining was starting to get to me, I discovered a way to travel the world from the safety of my favorite chair  -- I found a treasure trove of virtual tours. With a few clicks of my mouse, I joined a Smithsonian tour of Egyptian Heritage Sites, rode an elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower and came face-to-face with the wildlife of Antarctica. Best of all though, were the breathtaking botanical gardens I meandered through.  If you’re ready for a break from the humdrum pace of everyday life, then join me as we stroll through ten of the world’s best.  We’ll explore five of my favorites this week and five more next week. I hope you’ll join us for all ten.